Data

Data Hygiene Best Practices

2012_01_04_DataHygiene

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Keeping your customer data up-to-date and clean can be a daunting task. Here we have a few suggestions for maintaining your list and making sure that it’s as effective as it can be at a moment’s notice.

  • Segmenting data makes mailing more efficient and less risky to overall reputation
    • Segment by date, geo-location, past user behavior, opt-in source, campaign category, etc.
  • Know the source URL of your data
    • Verify opt-in information (i.e., date, IP address, etc.)
  • ‘Clean’ the data as much as possible.
    • Filter with suppression files, unsubscribe files, hard bounces, known spam traps, etc.
  • Consider filtering by domain
    • Known domains that have caused problems in the past with delivery.
    • .gov, .biz, .edu, .mil can be problematic, make sure the user knows they will receive email.
  • Always remove hard bounces permanently; create a global suppression file
    • Mailing to hard bounces over and over will get you blocked and listed on Spamhaus and other email black lists.
  • Avoid mailing to older data
    • In general, don’t mail to data over a year old and limit mailing to over six months old.
  • Don’t mail to any address with ‘Postmaster’, ‘Info’, etc.
  • Do an eyeball scan of any domains that may look suspicious
    • People who are trying to catch “spammers” will make up fake addresses to try and catch non-legit mailers and cause legal problems.
  • Manage unknown users differently than users who have a history in the database.

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